You should be required to drive completely across Texas at 55 mph in a VW van. We’ll ask your opinion on the 55 mph limit after that and see if you still agree.
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+1
Or, even if one is driving across PA, on the PA Turnpike!
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Yep. Try commuting 100 miles a day at 55 on freeways no less. In the 50s, even the two lane highways were 65. At least now they are reluctantly raising the limit to 60. South Dakota at 70 and 80 on the interstate.
Once again I think we are looking at a solution in search of a problem. The risk of injury from any cause, while in a moving car, is very, very low compared to what it was when we old geezers were kids. This “solution” appeals to the folks who are screaming “Stop the world, I want to get off!”, and that gets some votes for a State Senator from a very congested city with all kinds of other transit options.
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The obvious solution is the same as when I was a kid in a 36 hp VW. Don’t try it.
The added safety of slower cars would be preferable to the advantages of more power.
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I keep thinking Ipass could make a lot of money by issuing a speeding ticket after collecting your toll. Quite often 15 over the limit to keep in sync with the flow of traffic. RE CA driving, last time I was there many construction zones fines double, and no construction.
No need for new laws, this will eventually be implemented with autonomous vehicles.
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They probably use the same version of Math trump utilizes with his property values and taxes…
Speed-governing might not be the ideal solution, but the fact remains:
If people didn’t speed, there would be virtually no such thing as ‘traffic’.
All traffic really is is the bunching up of vehicles at control nodes(intersections or zones signed and/or signaled for the control of vehicles and pedestrians). Admit it! We’ve all ‘jack-rabbited’ away from a light turned green, or from a Stop sign, only to end up braking hard as we all compress at the intersection a quarter mile up the road. That behavior, and speeding in general, creates traffic. When folks use the word traffic in conversation, this is the real meaning of the term. (Unless they’re talking about Steve Winwood & Dave Mason…!)
If, instead of treating the posted speed limits as the minimum speed one should drive, everyone drove 5mph below speed limits, this bunching up would rarely occur, not to mention crashes occurring because of one-upmanship - someone always trying to go faster than someone else.
In my experience, “traffic” (I assume that you mean slow-moving traffic/stop & go traffic/traffic jams) are almost always the result of (pick one or more):
Road construction with lane closures
Accidents–sometime with lane closures
Traffic volume that simply exceeds the capacity of the roadway
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Yeah, traffic volume is the key cause of traffic jams around here. We speed when the traffic is light!
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I24, I40 and I65 all going through Nashville has a lot to do with Nashville slow traffic… Plus over population for the roads is another BIG reason for slow traffic…
When less traffic everyone can speed, when heavy traffic no one can speed… Period…
Has vey little to do with if no one is speeding… lol
All of which are reasons to adjust speed for prevaling or anticipated conditions.
“Traffic” is what results when hundreds of drivers, averaging 10mph over PSL(posted speed limit) have to brake hard as they race up to one of the conditions/scenarios you listed.
What if, instead of the above, everyone averaged 5mph below PSL, and braked gradually as they approached a reduced lane zone, or a crash scene, etc.?
Instead of speeding up to a halt, and then doing ‘stop-n-go’ through a pinch point, they are still spread out enough to allow others into their lanes, and yet keep moving, albeit at maybe 20mph below PSL. Just light tapping of the gas to keep rolling. It also uses less gas to go slowly through a pinch point, vs repetitive stop & go.
It takes an entirely different frame of mind to wrap around what I’m saying, along with leaving home earlier, and also looking at the phone before leaving home, to see which routes to where one is going are least congested.
By speeding, and remember, you are not alone in thinking this way, you are all eventually going to create ‘traffic’, sooner or later.
I disagree with your basic idea. Speeding has very little to do with heavy traffic, it’s the number of cars per lane-mile.
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BTW; when the LEO is out and about running the I-states controlling the speed limit, traffic backs up also and NO ONE is speeding… lol
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Well, I beg to differ, but… ask me how I know that driving slower itself reduces ‘traffic’. I practice what I’ve been sharing in this conversation.
EG:
I’m doing 50mph in a 55 on I-95 in CT, right hand lane. I see a sign “Construction next two miles”. Already I lower my speed to 45, which puts more space between drivers ahead of me in my lane. By the time I arrive in the construction zone, I’m tapping the gas at 25-30mph, vs alternating between brake and accelerator, and before I know it, I’m passing the “End Construction” signs, and slowly accelerating back up to 50.
Cars to the left of me are doing the stop & go dance, changing lanes without signaling, and slamming their brakes once in their ‘faster’ lane.
Sighhhhhh… And I think to myself:
Just a few years ago, I drove like them!
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That’s because most of you were doing 65 in a 55mph zone, or 80 in a 70zone when you noticed the officer!
If more folks just did what I do, keep right, keep a few mph under PSL, there would be no “traffic”!
I just thought of one more reason for “traffic”!
In my area, most of the roads are two lanes, with no passing allowed. All you need is one self-rightous person driving slower than the speed limit to create a line of cars that, in some instances, can grow to 1/4 mile–or maybe more–piled-up in back of the one driver who thinks that he should be able to control the speed of other vehicles on the road.
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VDC:
But we’re all still moving! VS rushing up to a control device where we must all stop n go to get through. People complain about traffic signals where “only two or three vehicles” can get through before the next red. Well, if everyone drove slower, those “two or three vehicles” - the only ones stopped at the light - would all make it in that green cycle!
It’s better to slow down and crawl up to a control device than to rush up to it, resulting in everyone waiting forever to get through it.
This isn’t going to be easy folks, but you really have to change how you think about driving. Large semi drivers are pretty good at this, but the reason we see them in traffic is largely because of many of the four-wheelers(cars, SUVs) zipping around them, giving them agita 
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